


Find in the Ashes

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28035921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Before he can even say hello, Hera says, "I hear you lost your ship?"
Relationships: Han Solo/Hera Syndulla, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	Find in the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PoliticalPadmé (magnetgirl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/gifts).



They're on Onira Station looking for work. Chewie's got a friend who says the big players in this sector do business here on this out of the way refueling station where the New Republic doesn't care as long as the station owners pay their taxes. Han has found jobs in worse places, but thinking about those takes his mind down dark paths he doesn't want to follow. You can't get work from a fellow professional if your face wears a trembling sorrow rather than the easy smile you built your career on decades ago when you still had that career.

He practices that smile now, looking down into his glass before taking a sweet sip. He orders all his drinks diluted with fruit juice, a trick he picked up from Leia over the course of too many diplomatic functions attended together. His smile slips off his face again.

Han isn't as young as he used to be, and the fruit juice makes his drinks go right through him. When he gets back from the 'fresher, Chewie's left their table. Han hopes that's good news for their employment prospects. He scans the room. Even in this low light, it's not hard to spot a Wookiee. It's even easier to make out the voice of his new companion as he sees Chewie's furry head at another table.

Before he can even say hello, Hera says, "I hear you lost your ship?"

Han covers his scowl and sits down without an invitation. "I wouldn't say I lost it. I know exactly where it's supposed to be."

Hera doesn't say the Falcon should be in a scrapyard, and that's how he knows she isn't as young as she used to be, either. In the old days, she'd have needled him mercilessly and he'd have given the same back to her. Now she plays with her own glass and he's willing to bet it's pure meiloorun juice with no booze at all.

Chewie says they're looking for work, because even after all this time, the big lug has yet to learn you don't tell the competition your plans outright.

"Not looking," Han says. "We're checking out our options."

"You're broke," Hera says, taking a drink. "Chewie told me."

Han gives Chewie a look. Chewie gives Han a shrug. "Fine. We're looking for jobs." He wonders how much his pride is worth right now, then remembers how much he spent on his last glass of mostly juice and decides it's not worth much. "Have you heard about anything good brewing?"

"No. I'm just passing through." She leans forward, and part of Han thinks if Hera Syndulla were any other Twi'lek woman in the galaxy, she'd be wearing a top that would dip open now, revealing just the barest tease of breast. He's known this woman on and off for thirty years, and she's still wearing a simple, practical flight suit that shows nothing she doesn't intend to show. "On the other hand, I could use some help with what I'm doing."

Alarm bells ring in his head. Someone else in this place would mean they want a hand moving some material from one place to another, or from one owner to a different owner. Han and Chewie came here for that kind of work, the only kind of work Han's ever been good at. Hera's not going to ask him to help her smuggle something. It'll have to do with the NR, or worse, with the Resistance, and there's only one group out there Han wants less to do with than those two.

"Thanks, but we'll pass."

"Suit yourselves." She doesn't sound disappointed. She sits back again. Carefully, as if prodding at broken flesh, she asks, "How've you been?"

It's a loaded question with too many answers. He can hide behind his charm and deflection for as long as it takes, but in thirty years, Hera's never once fallen for his banthashit. "I've been better. I guess Leia told you."

Now her eyes dart away. "Leia and I don't talk much these days."

"Yeah. Us either."

Chewie says Leia's fine. Han knows they still talk, and he doesn't like it but he can't order his best friend not to chat with his ex and it isn't as if either would listen. Hera's eyes smile even if her mouth can't get there. "I'm glad." She doesn't ask Chewie to tell Leia she says hello, and there's another pile of unsaid things behind that silence. Not all grudges can be forgiven.

Han might be the better face man for their team but Chewbacca is the better conversationalist when he has that chance. He asks Hera about her current gigs, how her ship's doing, and he tells her all about the ratty two-man shuttle they got their hands on three rotations ago.

"Seriously? I didn't know any of that model were still in service."

"Hey," says Han. "It's only temporary. I've got a line on a nice ship. That's why we're here. Get some credits, maybe figure out a few future jobs, and I can trade her in and put a solid payment down."

"I can't believe you lost the Falcon." She's teasing him now, a little of their old patter back in her voice.

"Well I can't believe you've still got the Ghost in the air. Shouldn't it have fallen to pieces by now?" Han falls back into it easily enough.

"I'll tell Chopper you said so."

"That psychotic rustbucket is still around? You know he tried to kill me once."

"Only once? He air-locked Kanan twice and that was just his first week aboard." The years haven't changed the warm, sad tone she uses when she says the guy's name. Han never met him, but he heard a few stories back in the day, and he spent enough time around their kid to get some idea of what he might have been like.

Han has a bad feeling he sounds the same on the rare occasions he talks about Leia. At least she's still alive, somewhere out there fighting the same old wars, unable to let go.

There won't be any jobs here tonight, and Chewie manages to convince Han to go see the Ghost. It's been long enough, and Chewie doesn't have to say Hera's ship is far and away nicer than what they arrived here in. He's not wrong. As Han boards, he notices the changes. She's upgraded the engines again. There are more cannons than he remembers. Some of the paintings inside have changed. She must still be visiting Sabine Wren now and then. Sabine was another pain in the ass on Hera's pain in the ass crew, and just thinking about those days now shifts a heavy weight from his heart right into his throat.

Hera misreads his stare, or maybe she reads him like a book. "That's one of Sabine's newest pieces. Sometimes I think if I ever needed to make money quick, I'd take down a bulkhead or two and sell them at an art auction." She tilts her head at Chewie. "And having said that, if I wake up tomorrow and find my bulkheads gone, Chopper will be the least of your worries."

"Relax," says Han. "Can you picture either of us at an art auction?"

That's enough to put a real smile on her face. "I suppose not." They might be thirty years older, but Hera has aged far more gracefully than Han has. She's still gorgeous after all this time and her smile sends an unexpected jolt down his spine.

He does what he always did when this happened in the old days, when the best pilot in the Rebellion before he got there turned out to be drop-dead beautiful and completely uninterested. "Of course, now that I think about it, Chewie cleans up pretty well, and I've learned a thing or two about hobnobbing with bigwigs. What do you think, pal? Two inch spanner, we could get this bulkhead off this garbage scow in under ten minutes." He smirks and Hera gives him the same annoyed look she always did.

They always argued. If it wasn't about whose ship was better, faster, more ready for a fight, it was about protocol and chain of command and why Han couldn't seem to remember to follow orders he didn't like. She'd gotten on great with Leia, and she'd practically adopted Luke like she wound up doing with half the pilots who reported to her, and she'd always loved talking ship maintenance with Chewie, but Hera and Han had managed to get under each other's skin almost every time they spoke. He'd shouted at Hera almost as much as he'd shouted at Leia, and the Rebellion rumor mill had eaten that right up, no matter how uninterested Hera continued to be. Even after the war, when Leia had wanted Ben to spend some time with the only other kid they knew with the Force, they'd kept up their low-grade battles. 

He expects her to fight back now. Instead, Hera gives him a long expression filled with what he can only see as disappointment before turning away. "You don't ever change, do you?" She nods at Chewie. "You're welcome to stay. I've got plenty of space. I came hoping to hire a new crew but I think I'll be moving on tomorrow."

Han watches her head aft towards the galley, and feels he's lost even though she didn't fight him.

Hera throws together some dinner for the three of them. Chewie thanks her profusely, inhaling everything on his plate. Han lingers over his own meal, not wanting to let on how long it's been since they had food this good. The best they can manage these days are ration bars, and the occasional fried womprat at a cantina while they work on getting jobs. Hera used to feed her own small army of a crew, and the portions reflect it. He doesn't have to ask her if she misses those days. The empty cabins say enough.

After dinner, Chewie plays dejarik with Hera's droid. Threats don't work on him and it's funny watching them swear at each other's moves.

Han wanders into the cockpit. It's not as nice as the Falcon's, not as lived in and comforting as far as he's concerned, ignoring the paint splashes and the deep groove worn into the pilot's seat from Hera's long life spent flying. There are small shapes painted onto the control panel, not Wren's work but something simpler, Twi'lek script he can't read drawn in a careful hand. Names, maybe. Probably. Hera's sentimental though she hates showing it.

"Don't get any ideas," she says, joining him. "This one's mine."

"You can keep it." He looks at the scrawls again. "How's the kid?"

Hera's face stills. He wonders how often she's had to deflect that question, how often she's had to pretend her son is dead. But she's known him for three decades, and he knows the reason Jacen went into hiding better than anyone else. Better than she does, if it comes to that. Hera believes Ben died at the school along with his classmates.

"He's doing all right. He tries not to contact me often." The raw wounds exposed between them now, she asks, "Have you heard anything at all from Luke?"

"No." He wishes he had his drink back, even watered down. Something to hide behind, something to dull the ache of losing everything.

She nods. She wasn't expecting he had but she had to ask, the same as he had to ask about Jacen. "We don't get to keep them. We just get to be lucky enough to have them for a little while in our lives." He doesn't know if she means Jedi, or children, or friends, or something else she's not explaining. Hera's always been a little weird this way, like she understands deeper truths than Han can. That's another thing that has always annoyed him about her: always acting like she's smarter than him, better than him. Even when he conned Rebel Command into making him a General just like her, she'd still looked at him with condescension, her eyes telling him she knew he was playing at a game she'd already won.

The old angers rise up in his mouth, but before they can spill out, Hera pulls him into an embrace. He's off-balance, both on his legs and in his head. His arms know what to do, wrapping around her automatically. "I missed you," she says. "Don't tell anyone. They'll never believe you anyway."

Just like that, the hard words drop and come out as a chuckle instead. "Guess not."

Hera is hard as durasteel and still she's soft pressed against him, and she smells a little of engine grease and more of soap. One good thing about getting old is that his own body isn't as ready to betray him, or else an armful of beautiful woman would already be turning into a mildly embarrassing situation. He'll drive nails into his own skin before admitting to the occasional dreams he's had about her over the years, but he has had them.

Quite a few started out just this way, as she tips her face up to his and kisses him. He's startled, but not startled enough to push her away, and after his initial shock, he kisses her back.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she says. It's both a warning and a promise. Anything that happens isn't going to change her plans, and he's fine with that. They get on each other's nerves too much to try and learn to spend time together now. She's not looking for him to fill a hole in her life, even if he can see the empty places, and he knows better than to think she's anything like a cure for the things wrong with him. They'll be back to their old fights by morning. And if they meet up by chance in a couple of months, it'll be the same, whether or not they end up in bed together a second time, or a third.

It's not something that can last past tonight. But maybe tonight's enough for people like them.


End file.
